Fit To A Tee After visiting six major manufacturers, our man had the answer

It was the kind of assignment that comes from the golf gods, not an editor: Visit a half-dozen equipment manufacturers, go through each company's custom club-fitting process and then apply a chunk of the GOLF PLUS budget toward purchasing my favorite sticks. (O.K., that last bit isn't true, but I'm working on it.) ¬∂ High-tech goodies once available only to Tour pros, such as computerized launch monitors, are now popping up at public driving ranges across the country, yet most weekend warriors have failed to take advantage of the technology. (In a November 2003 survey by Golf Datatech, only 33% of "serious" golfers had been custom-fitted in the past three years.) This means that even as the price of a set of clubs approaches the cost of a used car,buying decisions are still being made largely on the basis of acouple of waggles in the aisle at Nevada Bob's. I was theperfect candidate for a fitathon because of my indifferenceconcerning equipment. Lie and loft? Aren't those the essentialelements in any discussion of Manhattan real estate? Bounce?That's the title of Bon Jovi's latest CD, right?

PING It made sense to start my quest for enlightenment at Ping headquarters, in Phoenix, because company founder Karsten Solheim pretty much invented custom fitting. In 1972 Ping introduced its color-coding system, in which a player's height and the distance from his fingertips to the ground were charted to determine his clubs' optimal lie (which, it turns out, is the angle formed between the shaft and the sole of the club).

I was in the pink when I arrived at Ping on a perfect January day. Awaiting me on the driving range was a gleaming pyramid of balls and a cart stuffed with 40 clubs, most of them six-irons, the industry standard for club fitting. (They were the handsome new G2 series.) The cart, with its bevy of clubs that are all marginally different from each other, is the same setup used by the 3,600 Ping fitting accounts that are available to golfers across the country.

It was obvious from the start that Ping takes fitting seriously. Very seriously. My session began with a 40-item questionnaire administered by my cofitters, Scott Summers and James Uttecht. Then they measured my longest finger and the distance from my wrist to the ground, among other things. I was getting ready to turn my head and cough when I was finally allowed to slap a few six-irons.

Like Kenneth Starr, Ping fitters are obsessed with lies. "If you don't have the right lie, you have no chance of hitting good shots," said Summers. In search of enlightenment, he set up a wafer-thin sheet of plexiglass known as a lie board, from which I would hit different clubs with a special tape on the sole. With every swing the tape would reveal what area of the sole struck the board first.

As the fitting progressed, I was asked to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, the quality of each swing and, separately, the result. This was a mind-blowing concept. I had always assumed that the two were inextricably linked. But now the pointy heads at Ping were telling me that I could make a good swing, and the result could be sabotaged by a bad club. This sparked questions about free will versus determinism that I hadn't wrestled with since the first Matrix.

On a club with standard (flat) lie, the vagaries of my outside-in swing forced the toe of the club into the turf ahead of the rest of the sole, opening the face at impact and producing my trademark leak/push. Thus it was determined that I needed my irons "up" by 3 degrees, raising the toe and effectively leveling the sole. It was also recommended that, because I'm 6'1" and fairly upright at address, I use shafts a half-inch longer than standard.

By the time we had tested all the irons, wedges, drivers and putters, I had three blisters and my left hamstring was (inexplicably) throbbing. As I limped away from the range under an orange sunset, I became aware of a small piece of grass in my right eye. After vigorous rubbing, the wayward sod was dislodged by a tear that streaked down my cheek. Yes, the boys at Ping had made me cry.

CLEVELAND On the second stop of my fitapallooza it became obvious that club fitting is a window into the soul of each manufacturer. Cleveland employees are more surfer dude than scientist, prone to calling would-be customers bro or homey. No wonder the new company headquarters is being built in Huntington Beach, Calif., the self-styled Surf City, U.S.A.

Cleveland is staking its custom-fit program on six mobile RVs that are minimanufacturing plants on wheels. The so-called tour vans will crisscross the country this year for up to 1,000 public events, showing up at courses and driving ranges, and taking on all comers. "We want to treat you like a Tour player," says Cleveland's field promotions manager, David Hunter. "We'll fit you and then build the clubs in the van, and you can play with them the same day."

During my fitting we did due diligence with the six-iron (verdict: 2 degrees up, half-inch longer shafts), but Cleveland is famous for its wedges and I was happy to make that the emphasis, considering that one of my specialties is the skulled 60-yard pitch. The key to fitting wedges is the amount of bounce, which, I learned, is the angle formed by the leading edge of the club and the lowest part of the sole. Wedges with a high degree of bounce move through the sand more easily but do not dig into the turf, which can lead to thinned shots from the fairway. Naturally, I've been playing high-bounce wedges, exactly the opposite of what I need. When Hunter put a low-bounce wedge in my hands--it was from the newly redesigned 900 series--I discovered that sliding the club under the ball was like cutting into cake. This revelation sparked a similar reaction to the one I had at Ping, when it became clear that I had been playing the wrong lie: For the love of Hogan, why didn't anyone tell me this years ago?

CALLAWAY These days there is so much talk about launch angle on PGA Tour telecasts that it seems as if NASA should be a sponsor. The 21st century has ushered in a new space race for drivers, in which computer analysis of ball speed and spin rate and launch angle--that is, how the ball leaves the face of the club--can identify the club that produces maximum distance for any player. This was the focus of my trip to Callaway, in Carlsbad, Calif., the ancestral home of the Big Bertha.

Callaway had the coolest launch monitor I had seen so far, an indoor setup in which numerous high-speed cameras follow the path of the club and the ball's flight, producing actual photos and gigabytes of revealing data. Though I was hitting into a net, it was from the glorious vantage point of the tee box at Pebble Beach's 18th hole, thanks to a wall-sized photo that served as a backdrop. The calculated trajectory of my shot was then projected onto a flat-screen TV that had an amazingly detailed representation of the fairway. Callaway has 500 outdoor cart operations outfitted with portable, lower-tech launch monitors, but it's worth seeking out the deluxe Pebble setup, available to the public in Carlsbad, Las Vegas, Philadelphia and Indian Wells, Calif.

As Tiger and Ernie and Phil have discussed endlessly, the optimum driving condition is high launch (around 12 degrees) and low spin (about 2,500 revolutions a minute). Naturally, I had low launch (9-10 degrees) and more spin than Karl Rove (3,500 rpm), due mainly to the sidespin created by a power fade that sent ball after ball into the backyards of houses along the right side of Pebble's 18th fairway. Finally my fitter, Randy Peterson, could take it no longer, and he gave me a minilesson, moving my club through a more inside path to create a better release. I was a little startled by his hands-on approach. After all, the folks at Ping had studiously avoided dissecting my swing, not wanting to prejudice the fitting process. Peterson saw it a little differently. "As handicap numbers rise, swings don't repeat as efficiently, so the custom-fitting process becomes as much about the swing as the club," he said. "It's a blend of art and science that allows for a little interpretation and assistance."

Thanks to Peterson's tip, I began pounding the ball. According to the computers, my clubhead speed remained constant (106-109 mph) but the telltale ball speed jumped considerably (to around 156 mph) because of the purer strike. I was swinging a new ERC Fusion, which felt pretty hot, with a Peterson-ordained loft of 10 degrees. (Ping had determined that my driver should have 9 degrees of loft; Cleveland went with 9.5.) When I was given a 10-degree Great Big Bertha II that was 44.5 inches long, a half-inch shorter than standard, the numbers got even better. Finally I struck the mathematically perfect drive: 11.9-degree launch angle; spin rate of 2,550. According to the computers, my ball traveled 281.6 yards and was only 11 feet off-line. It was time to move on.

TITLEIST The next day I journeyed to the Titleist test center, in Oceanside, Calif., with a modicum of apprehension. Titleist is the official manufacturer to Serious Golfers everywhere. I was afraid that if they found out I own a seven-wood, I would be laughed out of the building. My fitter, Greg Cesario, turned out to be warm and welcoming, but he frowned when I mentioned that 24 hours earlier, I had dug out of the AstroTurf the secret to my swing. "You don't want to be working on a new action while being fitted," he said. "Try to go with your natural swing." Problem was, I could no longer remember what that was.

One of the hallmarks of the Serious Golfer is an obsession with shafts, and that dominated the conversation at Titleist. Its fitters were the first to focus on swingweight, which is the degree to which the club balances toward the head--it plays a big part in the feel of a club. Swingweight measurements are represented by a letter-number combination. With my 8.5-degree 983K driver I was a D3, which means I like it when the clubhead feels a little on the heavy side.

A bigger revelation was that I prefer graphite shafts in my irons. I had always thought this was strictly the province of old men who need more cushion to protect their tennis elbows, but, in fact, graphite-shafted irons are becoming common on Tour. As I discovered, the lighter shaft increases clubhead feel as well as clubhead speed, a tough combination to beat. Marrying Titleist's classic 762 irons to a GAT shaft by Graphite Design, which has a steel tip for stability, the club produced a tighter shot pattern, and my occasional thinned shots no longer felt like broken-bat grounders on a cold night. And if the tastemakers at Titleist say it's O.K. to use graphite in your irons, that's good enough for me.

TAYLORMADE Ever wonder what it would be like to star in a science-fiction movie? At TaylorMade, also in Carlsbad, I found out, thanks to the Motion Analysis Technology by TaylorMade (MATT) system. MATT was designed by the same folks who helped bring Gollum to life in the Lord of the Rings movies, and to begin the fitting, my body was outfitted with dozens of small, round reflective markers, which also adorn the heel, toe and shaft of the various test clubs. With every swing, the movement of the sensors was captured by high-speed cameras. From the data they produced, a three-dimensional computer animation was created and displayed on oversized flat-screen monitors, on which I magically became a Tron-like character. My swing could then be viewed from an endless number of perspectives and manipulated to highlight idiosyncrasies. (I was aghast to discover that at address, my feet were 9 degrees closed, my hips 12 degrees open and my shoulders 11 degrees closed.) Needless to say, this is a long way from lie boards and tape.

"With golf clubs becoming increasingly sophisticated, it's time to have swing analysis that can draw on the same science," says John Hoeflich, TaylorMade's senior director of business development. By this fall MATT will be available to the public at Carlsbad's La Costa resort, as well as at the Golf Club of Georgia, in Alpharetta; Jones Creek, in Augusta; and the PGA Learning Center, in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

As cool as the visuals are, there is a downside to such cutting-edge technology. Wearing the bralike vest of sensors and various other adornments was a little weird, as was hitting into a black tarp, devoid of target or context. At Titleist my fitting had been conducted on a manicured grass tee box with the sun at my back, because, I was told, the fitting process should re-create playing conditions on a course. MATT's virtual reality is anything but. And though two actual humans fussed over me throughout the process, they left it up to the computer to spit out the specs, which, interestingly, were the most extreme I encountered.

According to MATT, I needed irons that were 4 degrees up--Callaway and Titleist had deemed that flat was best for my, ahem, new swing--and I was fit into an R580 driver with only 8.5 degrees of loft and a very stiff shaft. When I was allowed to test the recommended driver, I couldn't keep the ball on the planet. After a dozen banana slices, one of my hosts, Will Miele, handed me the same head with a shaft that had more torque. I immediately started hitting it better, and it was nice to know that no matter how futuristic the process becomes, custom fitting will always require a human touch.

NIKE It's the end of the line, hoss--Fort Worth, Texas, home to the Nike test center. My host was one of the industry's foremost artisans, Tom Stites, who has built clubs for Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. I had no illusions that he would be impressed by my action. Founded in 1995, Nike's golf division was waiting to fill out its product line before launching a custom-fitting process. This spring the first 150 fitting accounts will be introduced, and by next January up to 1,000 locations should be up and running, many using proprietary launch monitors. Stites is overseeing the rollout, but in talking with him I sensed an ambivalence, even skepticism, about mass-market fittings. "There's no plexiglass on the course," Stites snorted, alluding to lie boards, "and you're probably going to need more than a six-iron during a round."

When we finally moseyed to the range, I was handed the radical new Slingshot irons and began roping high, soft three-irons with alarming ease. Watching my ball soar to the horizon, the laconic Stites finally came to life. He had spent 10 years developing these ultimate game-improvement clubs, the likes of which Tiger has no use for. But here I was, the target audience--double-digit handicap, dying to improve--and Stites surprised me by throwing himself into the fitting process. He sent two helpers scurrying back to the lab for ever more clubs, and with the furious pace of testing I began to sweat, even though the temperature was in the low 40s.

For the iron fitting Stites eschewed a lie board or launch monitor. "Ball flight and divot pattern tell me everything I need to know," he said. "Every swing is a crime scene, and I'm looking for forensic evidence." The verdict? A half-inch long and 2 degrees up on long irons, 1 up on the seven-through nine-irons and flat with the pitching wedge. Using the launch monitor, Stites put me in the new Ignite driver, with a massive 460cc head and 10.5 degrees of loft. I was leery of both the size of the clubhead and the high loft until I began bashing dead-straight drives to the back of the range. After one particularly blissful drive, Stites, the club-fitting skeptic, exclaimed, "Wunderbar! That's it, you're done."

It was the best I'd hit the ball in a long time, maybe ever. For that I could thank a swing tip from Callaway and alignment keys from TaylorMade; a heightened understanding of how the club interacts with the turf, gleaned from Ping and Cleveland; and a greater sensitivity to feel, discovered at Titleist. Here at Nike it all came together. Was it me or was it the custom-fit clubs? I know enough now to say it was a little of both.

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD BIGELOW/AURORA GUINEA PIG All of the club fitters had different methods, and sometimes wildly different results.COLOR PHOTO: CLUBS: MEL LEVINE G2 HLCOLOR PHOTO: CLUBS: MEL LEVINE Tour Action 900COLOR PHOTO: CLUBS: MEL LEVINE ERC FusionCOLOR PHOTO: DAVID WALBERG 983KCOLOR PHOTO: DAVID WALBERG R580COLOR PHOTO: DAVID WALBERG SlingshotFOUR COLOR PHOTOS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD BIGELOW/AURORA DOWN TO A SCIENCE At TaylorMade, the author was (from left to right) analyzed, scrutinized and digitized, but an old-fashioned swing tip at Callaway (far right) netted good results as well.

SI.COMSee SI staffer Gary Van Sickle's test drive of all the new clubs displayed at the recent PGA Merchandise Show at si.com/golf.